On Wednesday, the Kremlin reaffirmed Russia’s nuclear doctrine amid rumors that the US may provide longer-range weapons to Ukraine to strike targets deeper inside Russia, although President Trump has denied that he was considering such a move.
“The nuclear doctrine remains in force, and consequently, all its provisions apply,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine last year, and they were formalized in response to the Biden administration giving Ukraine the green light to strike Russian territory using US-provided ATACMS missiles, which have a range of about 190 miles.
The new nuclear doctrine lowers the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons. One of the changes, which Peskov mentioned to reporters, was to classify an attack by a non-nuclear armed state that’s supported by a nuclear-armed power as a joint attack.
Peskov’s comments came after a Financial Times report said that President Trump had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky if his forces could hit Moscow or St. Petersburg if the US provided longer-range weapons. The report said that Trump appeared to support the idea, but he later told reporters that he was not considering sending long-range weapons and said Ukraine shouldn’t try to hit Moscow.
The White House confirmed that Trump posed the question to Zelensky but insisted he was “merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing. He’s working tirelessly to stop the killing and end this war.”
Trump has announced a new plan to pour billions of dollars worth of more US weapons into Ukraine by first selling them to NATO countries. He also threatened to impose harsh tariffs on Russia and its trading partners if a peace deal isn’t reached within 50 days, an ultimatum Moscow has rejected.
